Taiwanese companies are continuing to do business with mainland China and appear to be less concerned about a possible war compared with two years ago, a new survey has found.
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Instead companies are adopting a variety of strategies to hedge risks, according to the report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank
The report found that companies’ expectations of a conflict between China and the United States had dropped by 10 points compared with 2022, which in turn made them more reluctant to fully move out of the mainland.
“The most notable change is a drop in the proportion of those expecting a US-China military conflict in the next five years, falling over 10 percentage points, from 38.7 per cent to 28.2 per cent,” the report said.
The number who believed that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was a disincentive for the mainland to attack also fell – from 50.5 per cent to 45.6 per cent – as did the number believing the industry would be an incentive for the US to come to the island’s aid, which dropped from 54.8 per cent to 48.9 per cents.